If you’ve been anywhere near Bookstagram or BookTok lately, you may have seen fans going nuts for the release of Onyx Storm. The third novel in the bestselling Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros had a widely-hyped launch that we haven’t seen since the Harry Potter books.
The series follows Violet Sorrengail, who is sent to Basgiath War College to train as a dragon rider and defend her homeland. The problem is, she’s far from prepared to take on such a dangerous and gruelling role, and numerous other students are out for her blood due to her mother’s notorious status in the army.
The Empyrean story combines the brutal gore and death from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series with the Romantasy genre seen in the ACOTAR books by Sarah J. Mass. It’s therefore unsurprising that this hit is getting its own screen adaptation.
If you want to know more about the Fourth Wing TV series (named after the first book) this is everything you need to know.
Which streaming platform will air the Fourth Wing TV series?
It was confirmed in October 2023 that Amazon MGM series and Michael B. Jordan’s Outler Society had optioned the rights to Fourth Wing, meaning it will air on Prime Video. This is the home of other popular adaptations such as The Boys and Fallout.
Amazon Prime Video
When could the Fourth Wing show be released on Amazon?
As we’re still so early in the project, it’s hard to predict a release date. The TV show was first announced back in October 2023 by Variety, just after the second book, Iron Flame, hit shelves.
The showrunner was tapped in July 2024, and since there’s been little news. We’re still waiting on a cast and a filming date.
ABC News reported in January that Yarros revealed she’s read two versions of the script at a launch party for Onyx Storm, so things are progressing in the right direction. We imagine the next news would be around casting before filming and editing can begin.
Production could take a while, considering the scale and nature of what this show is about. We’ve got many, many dragons to animate, and other special effects and stunts such as the dreaded parapet and all the signets of the various characters.
Other fantasy shows from Amazon Prime Video such as The Rings of Power, Good Omens and Wheel of Time have taken between 18 months and two years from production beginning to eventually hitting screens (or at least, for the series not during COVID). So, it’s likely to be the same with Fourth Wing.
If the characters were cast this year, and filming began not long after that, then we predict the earliest we could see Fourth Wing hit Prime Video is in 2027.
Of course, this is just an estimation – hopefully, we’ll learn more in the coming months, especially now that there’s more interest in the franchise thanks to the launch of Onyx Storm which could progress things more quickly.
Who is involved in the Fourth Wing TV show – is there a cast?
Sadly, we don’t yet have any actor announcements, so we’re no closer to discovering who will play our beloved Violet Sorrengail and Xaden Riorson.
What we do know is that Yarros is firm in her stance on who plays the leading male role, as ABC News reports: “My biggest thing has always been, Xaden isn’t white and I need him to not be white on television”.
In the books, Xaden is 23 and is described as tall (roughly around six foot four) and muscular with windswept dark hair. Meanwhile, Violet is aged 20 and very petite, with a delicate frame due to having fragile bones – a key plot point in Fourth Wing that puts her at a huge disadvantage when training as a dragon rider.
Her mother describes her as having “pale skin, pale eyes and pale hair”, though her locks are rather distinctive as they start off brown and then fade to a metallic silver at the ends.
We do know that Moira Walley-Beckett will serve as the showrunner. She has previously worked on Anne With An E and Flesh and Bone. However, most people will know her work from Breaking Bad. She penned nine episodes, including the Emmy award-winning Ozymandias. Many critics consider this to be one of the best episodes of television, so that certainly bodes well for the Fourth Wing series.
Yarros has read two versions of the script, and certainly seems happy with what she’s seen so far, as shown in this book interview that’s circulating on TikTok:
Executive producers will be Rebecca Yarros, Liz Pelletier for Entangled Publishing and Liz Raposo for Outlier.
Will there be more than one series of Fourth Wing?
According to Deadline, there may be a separate instalment based on each book… but only if this first one is a success.
For reference, Yannos is planning on five books in total for the Empyrean series at the time of writing, and we’re only on book three right now. That’s plenty of material for a show to draw on for years to come.
What will the plot be of the Fourth Wing TV show?
While we won’t divulge lots of spoilers here, the official logline of the series from Variety indicates that it will follow the plot of the first book:
Enter the brutal world of Basgiath War College where there is only one rule: Graduate or Die. Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail is expected to live a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general― her tough-as-talons mother―has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. If the fire-breathing beasts don’t kill her, one of her fellow riders just might. Suspense, action, romance, and dragons blend together in a propulsive fantasy adventure from NYT bestselling author Rebecca Yarros.
Fourth Wing predominantly focuses on the extreme training regime that Violet is thrown into at Basgiath. She’s already wildly unprepared to ride dragons as her mother and sister do, as she prepped to train in the ways of a scribe. However, she’s forced into the squad and, as such, into many life-or-death scenarios.
To make matters worse, her mother played a huge part in the war – and the college houses many children of rebellion soldiers, including the son of the leader, Xaden. He, and many others, are hell-bent on revenge, and are plenty happy to take that out on Violet.
Fans of the series love Fourth Wing due to its political schemes, fantasy setting and ruthless violence. At the centre is a complicated (and often steamy) enemies-to-lovers romance with many twists and turns along the way.
